THIS week I am mourning the loss of actress and local-girl-made-good Dana Wynter, who I had the pleasure to chat to and correspond with during the Nineties, even though she lived in the hills of southern California.

Dana was born in Germany in 1931, but her family moved to Borehamwood where her dad became a doctor with a practice in Clarendon Road.

When I spoke to Dana she recalled growing up in our town before the Second World War and remarked how rural the area still was. She remembered going out horse riding and seeing cattle being driven along Shenley Road.

I am not sure if her father was interned during the war, but in the late Forties they moved to Rhodesia; although Dana moved back to England a few years later.

She originally intended to have a career in medicine, but caught the acting bug and her striking beauty soon got her noticed.

One of Dana’s earliest screen roles was in the Elstree-made low-budget movie The Woman’s Angle in 1952, which included in the cast the equally unknown Joan Collins.

When she moved to Hollywood several studios offered her contracts and she accepted one from 20th Century Fox in 1955. Her film career went on to include such well-remembered movies as Sink The Bismarck, Airport and D Day the Sixth Of June, with Robert Taylor and Richard Todd. Oddly enough, in one of our phone conversations Dana said she had lost the address of Richard decades earlier, but I was able to put them both in touch.

The most famous film Dana starred in was Invasion Of The Body Snatchers in 1956, which has become a cult classic, about aliens replacing people with duplicate bodies grown in pods while they sleep. I often wonder if that has happened to some of the people I know in real life.

For more than 50 years, Dana would still receive fan mail, attend conventions and even get students approach her who were doing university theses about the film.

Dana told me: “It is very flattering to be remembered, but frankly it was a few weeks’ work decades ago and they want to anaylse every scene and word spoken.

“I just learnt my lines and did what the director said, but students would say ‘when you ran up the stairs chased by aliens you took six breaths at the top. What was significant about that number?’ Well, it was just how long it took to catch my breath, but they love to find hidden meanings.”

Dana had a successful career on American television from the Fifties, guest starring in many famous series. She bowed out with the television movie Return Of Ironside in 1993. She remained modest about her success. She said: “Acting is not a real job for grown-ups compared with, say, the medical profession and I never took my career that seriously.”

Sadly Dana suffered from heart problems in recent years and left the wish that her ashes be interred near her holiday home in Ireland.

On another note, I hope everyone has noticed the film image banners that have gone up in Shenley Road and will soon be joined by film plaque heritage boards in the flower beds, to remind residents and visitors alike of our unique film and TV heritage.

I have been asked why they say “Made in Elstree”. That was a point of discussion, but it was felt that name would be more widely recognised by visitors. It also recognises the fact that when all the studios were operating here Borehamwood was part of the municipal area known as Elstree hence Elstree Parish Council and up until the early Seventies Elstree Rural District Council. Therefore, in theory, all of the studios were in Elstree.

Anyway don’t blame me. I would prefer to spell Boreham Wood as two words as it was when I grew up during the Fifties and Sixties.